Pentecostals believe very strongly in aiming directly at the Devil and his works. Sometimes, that's a must. However, there are many problems with using the 'frontal assault' approach by itself. For instance:
The thing they are attacking may not be Satanic; it may just seem so. We need to understand why a person is the way they are. For example, mental disturbance may look like it's made by the devil, but usually it isn't. Instead of going off condemning people and popular culture, we need to find out why something that seems demonic is so popular. What is the symbolism touching in us that gives it so much effect? It'd be easier to get teenagers away from dabbling in the occult if we really thought about what the occult is appealing to in the teenage mind.
It takes time to develop a relationship of trust with those who are unknowingly doing or supporting the Devil's work. It takes time to show love, and it takes time for that love to be trusted. They're people, and none of them are beyond the reach of Christ's love.
Some people don't really let themselves feel the ugliness of spiritual warfare. They actually want to see spiritual combat, see devils lash out and experience extended struggles with sensational happenings. To them, it's a swashbuckling adventure, and they're the heroes. But think of real guns-and-bombs war here : the carnage, death, destruction, and hatred -- there are some who find that exciting, too. They need to grasp the truth of how horrible such things are.
Satan's work is not at all simple. It goes on at all sorts of different levels from all sorts of thoughts, people, movements, and happenings. Hit it from only one angle, and the Devil works all the other angles that much harder.
So, direct attacks on a work of Satan have their place, but not by themselves. A badly-aimed attack is like a mischosen drug that can kill the patient.
RECONCILIATION AND REPENTANCE
"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes."--- Dear Abby (Abigail vanBuren)
One of the things that is hard for a nation or a society to do is to come to grips with the evils it has done. It tries to make excuses, saying 'it was the best choice we had at the time' or 'we didn't know better', or 'we did what we were told', or 'that was our ancestors, not us'. The Bible says that there's a tie-in between what we know and what we are responsible for (for instance, Heb 10:26), and this is true of whatever groups, cliques, neighborhoods, ethnicities, classes, and races we are in, no less than for each of us as a person. There is also a tie-in between what we know that we are responsible to know, and what we are responsible for; deliberate (or even benign) ignorance is no excuse. Historically, it's always been very easy for us to plead ignorance, but very hard to really get to believe it ourselves, because the truth is out there and some will see it, eventually toppling the house of cards that backs its evils.
When the powers in a society willfully and unjustly harm people, the Holy Spirit is disarmed from working through those powers, since the Spirit is not one to use force to take control. The Spirit can often still be at work anyway, through believers from among the victims of the injustice. Those victims are, after all, the ones who need the binding of wounds and the caring and the feeding and the teaching, the ones who need the support of a powerful God.
But it does not do for a Christian to sit back and scream ruddy murder. That does nothing to transform things or to make them better. The Spirit equips each believing Christian with gifts and skills, and opens doors of opportunity for using those gifts and skills in witness and service to other people. I believe that the New Testament holds within it the key to rebuilding the societies we live in. But it won't be found by developing full-scale social ideologies (which fail, and in any case will turn into socio-political idols). It will be found by looking at the example of Christ, the words of the Prophets, and the letters of Paul.
When I look at all the conflicts in this world, open and sub-surface, I think of Christ. Christ had a way of turning the tables on the world -- and I don't just mean at the Temple. Christ stressed love, honesty, justice, diligence, active caring for others, and reconciliation. Christ made it clear that the relationship with one's neighbors was the key sign of the health of one's relationship with God (see especially Mt 5:21-24). Our societies need Christ's kind of reconciliation more than ever. Paul was even able to speak of Christians having a ministry of reconciliation. He set that ministry into the context of what Christ did in bringing us back together with God; thus, reaching people with the gospel message is the most important aspect of this ministry of reconciliation. Yet, the other part of a reconciliation ministry is that Christ liberates us all to live in solidarity with God and each other. I think a vision of reconciliation is the most important gift that Christian believers can give to the world and the political systems right now.
Indeed, the ultimate reconciliation is already under way, that between God and God's entire fallen creation. Unlike in the responsibility chain above, God (the one who did NOT commit the sin or ruin the relationship) takes on the full role of the responsible One, and has brought it to the point of forming a new relationship. As usual, God did it, we didn't. If God waited around for us to do it, it would never happen, for we are irresponsible. That's what got us into this bind to begin with.
"Every act of forgiveness involves at least three elements:
We rediscover the humanity of the person who has wronged us, seeing that individual as a human being, not just as the one who offended us;
We surrender our right and desire to get even or punish the person;
We revise our feelings toward the individual and are open to a new relationship built on mutual respect.
Seeing the person differently allows our feelings to change."---- Lewis Smedes
"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future."---- Paul Boese
WHAT IS A FAST?
Fasting is part of the faith life of religions old and new all over the world. In a fast, the believer chooses, for a set time, to do without something that is hard to do without. This is done so that it does not come between the believer and God, so it cannot act as a god over that relationship and over the life of the believer.
Usually, the fast is to do without food. Food is one of the great blessings of God in our lives, a true pleasure and a true necessity. But humans tend to be gluttons; we want to eat more. Our hunger can compel us, force our hand, occupy our thoughts. When we have anything in our lives that we don't or can't say no to, then it is lording over us. But God is Lord; if something else takes up God's place in our lives, it is an idol, and we are living in something akin to idolatry. Fasting helps to bring it back into enough control for us to surrender it to God so it can be returned to its rightful place in life. Food is the foremost example of such a thing.
You can fast from some foods, and not others. You can fast from watching television, having sex, and buying pleasure items, even from buying ordinary stuff. You can fast from hobbies you crave, places you are unhealthily drawn to, music, books, news, and movies. You might even find it necessary to fast from use of the Internet -- though please don't start until you're done using this site. :-) If you can be described as a 'junkie', 'freak', or 'fanatic' about something, that's a good thing to fast from. For most people in North America, and the upper classes all over the earth, the most important fasting may be to fast from being a consumer of goods, for our role as a consumer consumes us spiritually. For Catholics, fasting for Lent is one of the most enduring hallmarks of their tradition.
Fasting In Repentance
1 Samuel 7:6 (national); Joel 1:14; Jonah 3:5-9 (Nineveh); Mark 2:18 (re John the Baptist's followers)
how does this work? You realize that what you did was very wrong. Doing things that way is destructive; it harms others, and thus yourself. Wrongdoing blocks the value you have as a person; it adds to you a hellishness that saps you spiritually. To repent is to reject this hellishness.
What does fasting do that furthers the repentance/healing? Fasting is a discipline. By doing it, you change your way of living for a while, taking away something very basic to the body's health. The whole You enters into [ or 'experiences' ] the unwholeness that your sin creates. Things are not right, and feeling that unrightness through the discomforts of hunger helps to firm up your resolve not to do it again, a resolve to live a different kind of life.
Leviticus 16:29-34 (Yom Kippur), done "that you may humble your souls", and Numbers 29:7-11.
Fasting and Obeying God
"First, let [fasting] be done unto the Lord with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven."------- John Wesley, as found in the collection *Sermons On Several Occasions* (Epworth, 1971), p.301
If one of the purposes of fasting is to bring yourself to obey and follow God, then what can fasting mean when life after fasting does not bear the marks of such obedience? In the face of a nation that fasted and wailed before God as if they were holy, but did not live Godly lives, the prophets spoke of the kind of 'fasting' God wanted. Or, as Isaiah said, especially 58:6 :
"Isn't this the fast that I want :to loosen the bonds of wickedness,to undo the bands of the yoke,to let the oppressed go freeand break every yoke?"
The disciples often did not fast at the usual times specified by the Jewish faith. (This was so very different from the Pharisees and the followers of John the Baptist, who would fast regularly.) This was not done to make a point about fasting, but a point about Jesus, since Jesus' coming was God's response to the pleas of all those who had been fasting in repentance and for God to rescue them. Jesus spoke little of fasting, and when he did, it was about the right spirit to fast in. Jesus spoke more often about feasting, comparing the Kingdom of God to a banquet. This was foreshadowed by Zechariah, who prophesied that one day the solemn fast days of the Jewish faith would become "cheerful feasts". Not that Jesus was against fasting. He himself fasted and faced the temptation to use His power to get food to break His fast. He spoke of the role of fasting and prayer in healing and in casting out evil spirits.
The early church expected those who fast to give away what they would have eaten, either in money-value or in food, to those in need. (Shepherd of Hermas 3.5.3; Augustine's Sermon 208). Origen (Homilies on Leviticus, 10) even praised those who fasted in order to give to the poor.
"Is not the neglect of this plain duty (I mean fasting, ranked by our Lord with almsgiving and prayer) one general occasion of deadness among Christians?"--- John Wesley, *The Journal of John Wesley*
Asking God to Change
Fasting to ask God to change course : Ezra 8:21-23
-- why would this matter to God? Because God cares that we care.
When David had been caught by Nathan the Prophet in his evil deed of murder and adultery (2 Sam 12), Nathan ended by forgiving David of his sin, but telling him that the son born from this relationship was to die (verses 13-14). David took his sorrow over this to the Lord in prayer and fasting and tears, laying on the ground, doing nothing else for a whole week (try doing that when you're the sole leader of a nation). But this did not save the son. Once the baby died, David immediately got up, washed and clothed himself, went to worship, and then went to eat. This puzzled the people around him: shouldn't he be fasting over the child's death? David's answer showed how deeply he understood what he was fasting for :
"While the child was alive, I fasted and wept, thinking, 'Who knows, maybe the LORD will be gracious to me so the child may live.' But now that he has died, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again??" (2 Samuel 12:22-23)
David was fasting and weeping out of love for his son, the son his own evil deeds created, the son his own evil deeds killed. He had already come to hate the great sins that he did. He had already mourned as terribly as he could. It was now his task to lead a nation (God's own covenant people), follow God, and comfort Bathsheba who was also mourning over the child that was hers as well as his. But he can't do any of that while he's on the ground fasting and wailing. The time for fasting was over; the time for renewed living was at hand. By setting himself right with God, David was once again blessed by God, as the Lord took that twisted relationship and made from it David's eventual heir, Solomon.
Fasting As Part of Mourning
For most of the rest of us, we have no nation to run. The loss of a loved one affects us so much that we may not care to eat. Or we may come to understand the damage of all those little wrongs we did to that someone, and plead for forgiveness to God. The Bible has many examples of fasting as part of mourning :
· 1 Sam 31:13;
· 2 Sam 1:12;
· Joel 2:12;
· Nehemiah 1:4 (sad news)
Another aspect of this is to fast to commemorate a catastrophe -- the traditional Jewish fasts for the events described in :
· Jeremiah 52:12-13, 39:2;
· 2 Kings 25:1-2;
· Ezekiel 24:1-2;
· Jeremiah 41:1-2; Esther 4:16.
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